But he vaguely felt a sense of unease.
A vague, indescribable unease, like a subtle crack quietly creeping up on the tapestry of fate.
Odin clenched the Eternal Spear, golden divine power flowing in his palm.
He tried to use his own divine power to perceive the source of that unease, but found nothing.
“Your Majesty?”
The guard standing beside the throne noticed Odin’s abnormality and asked softly.
“It’s nothing.” Odin shook his head, loosening his grip on the spear, “Perhaps I’ve been too tired recently.”
But the light in his single eye did not return to peace; that unease still existed, like a tiny ink dot falling into clear water, slowly and firmly spreading out.
And the direction of the spread was precisely that endless darkness in the deep space of the Universe.
In that darkness, Asat Pramad stood in the void, and the Asgard continent gradually shrank behind him into a golden speck.
He took off the top hat on his head, revealing the slowly rotating dice.
The purple light reflected his White suit, outlining a lonely and eerie contour in absolute darkness.
When Hela returned to her bedchamber, the sky had already grown dark.
Asgard’s night sky was different from anywhere else in the Nine Realms; those stars seemed closer and brighter, like gemstones meticulously arranged on the dome by some God, twinkling with Eternal, unchanging light.
Her footsteps echoed in the wide corridor, the torches on both sides swaying slightly as she passed, and the firelight cast upon her dark green battle skirt, projecting flowing shadows.
Fenrir did not follow inside; the giant wolf was left in the courtyard outside the palace, currently lying on a patch of grass, its amber eyes half-open and half-closed, yet its ears remained erect, capturing every movement around it.
Hela closed the door of her bedchamber, that door cast from ebony and gold closing behind her, making a dull sound.
She walked to the center of the room, standing there without moving for a long time.
The furnishings of the bedchamber were identical to when she left; that spacious bed was covered with dark green silk, an unlit oil lamp sat on the low cabinet by the bedside, and several tapestries depicting Asgard’s glorious battles hung on the walls, with fine stitches and intense colors.
But Hela’s attention was not on these things at all.
In her mind, she repeatedly replayed the conversation on the plain just a moment ago—that bizarre entity wearing a White tailcoat whose head was a purple dice.
Every word he said was like a nail deeply piercing the depths of her consciousness.
“Asat Pramad…” She whispered the name, rolling each syllable over the tip of her tongue, feeling the strange rhythm brought by this unfamiliar word.
She walked to the window and pushed open the gold-rimmed window.
The night wind surged in, carrying Asgard’s unique aura—green grass, soil, the water vapor of waterfalls, and some indescribable ancient fragrance.
Hela looked toward the direction of the Golden Palace outside the window; that Golden Palace still shone with a warm brilliance in the night, like the beating heart in the chest of a sleeping behemoth.
“Who on earth are you?” She whispered to the night sky.
No one answered her.
Hela stood by the window for a long time, the night wind blowing her dark green long hair streaming backward.
Then she turned abruptly, walking toward the bookshelf in the corner of the room.
That bookshelf occupied the entire wall, densely packed with parchment scrolls and leather-bound books, each carrying Asgard’s knowledge and wisdom of thousands of years.
She reached out and pulled out an atlas, spreading it open on the desktop.
That was a starmap of the Nine Realms, marking the relative positions of the Nine Realms such as Asgard, Jotunheim, Muspelheim, and Vanaheim in the Universe, as well as the Bifrost Bridge paths connecting various realms.
Hela’s gaze swept across those markings, her fingertips moving slowly on the parchment, finally stopping at that circle of markers on Asgard’s boundary defense line.
That was a defense line she had personally participated in designing, integrating Odin’s divine power and Asgard’s most advanced magic technology.
Theoretically, it was sufficient to repel the invasion of any non-Asgard life form, unless the opponent held specially authorized passage runes or possessed power far exceeding the defense line’s bearing limit.
And Asat Pramad, that strange entity without even a head, said he just “walked in.”
Hela’s brow furrowed.
She put down the atlas, turned and walked toward the cabinet on the other side, which stored Asgard’s record archives of known civilizations and races in the Universe.
She took a thick leather booklet from the cabinet, opened the yellowed pages, and browsed page by page.
“Vanir… characteristics… wrong.”
“Frost Giant… characteristics… not this one.”
“Dark Elves… characteristics… no.”
“Fire Giants… characteristics… also no.”
Hela turned page after page.
The booklet recorded all known intelligent races in the Nine Realms, from huge-figured trolls to tiny light elves, from rock giants feeding on metals to flower demons symbiotic with plants, each with detailed descriptions and characteristic analyses.
But none of them matched Asat Pramad.
She closed the booklet, her expression becoming even more solemn.
Then she remembered something, walked to the highest layer of the bookshelf, and took out a dusty ancient book from there.
The cover of that book was made of some kind of black leather, the edges worn to white.
There were no text markings on the cover, only a skull pattern surrounded by Fire.
This was Asgard’s record regarding the “outside World.”
The so-called outside World referred to the more distant star regions outside the Nine Realms, places that even Odin’s conquests had never touched.
Most of what was recorded in the book were rumors, legends, and extremely limited observation data.
Most of the information was vague, like looking at distant mountain shadows through thick fog.
Hela opened that ancient book, reading through it page by page.
She saw vague records about the “Celestials,” saying they were a group of armored cosmic giants who had visited the Nine Realms in ancient times, leaving behind some buildings and ruins later generations called “miracles.”
She saw fragments about the “Eternal,” saying it was a race with extraordinary lifespan and powerful strength, scattered among civilized Worlds throughout the Universe.
She saw descriptions of other cosmic realms such as the “Kree Empire” and the “Skrull Empire.”
But she still found no information matching Asat Pramad.
Hela closed the book and walked back to the window.
The night wind blew across her face.
She closed her eyes, re-outlining Asat Pramad’s appearance in her mind: that purple dice, that palm holding up the dice, that White tailcoat, and that faint aura that seemed to seep in from outside the World.
Every detail about him was something she had never seen before.